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04 April 2002
My secret life as an orangutan
This is life on the Esperanza: you do whatever comes your way,
whatever needs to be done - even if it's extremely silly.
It is my first time on a Greenpeace
ship after having been volunteering in the international office
for a year now. I have a degree in translation (French and
Italian) and worked as a translation editor for a while. While
looking for another job, I wanted to do useful work for a
professional organization, and Greenpeace it was.
Today I was not only wearing an orangutan costume, I felt like an orangutan as well...hanging from the ropes, beating my chest, making monkey noises no-one could hear through the costume, but which helped me play my role. Press and Greenpeace boats surrounded the ship while we entered the harbour of Hamburg, as an official welcome for the Esperanza.
Tomorrow we have a press conference on board, followed by
an open boat afternoon and Saturday the kids from the "kids for
forests" program will dress up the ship as an ancient forest.
The stars representing the animals of the world's last ancient
forests: Lesley the African forest elephant, feeling a bit lost
there on the heli-deck cause she could hardly see or move in
that huge costume, Bill the North-American grey wolf was
sneakily roaming his territory, Andrew the Amazon jaguar was
hunting for news, and last but not least Harry the
(climbing!) Andean huemul, Damian the European Brown bear
and Cath the cat (Siberian tiger) crawled high up in the mast.
But life here is not all glory in front of the camera: the deck
needs scrubbing, the corridors need sweeping and 35 mouths
need to be fed. Crew diaries need translating, press releases
need to be written and meetings need to be annotated. And this
is just my contribution!
Everyone works hard to make it all
happen, everyone on board is my personal hero. Thank you for a
wonderful time and an experience I will never forget.
Ilona
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